Since ever, travel agencies that have a significant part of their business tied to the selling of air tickets (until recently, travel agencies used to sell approximately 70% of all airline tickets), needed only to rely on commissions paid by airlines to secure a significant part of their gross income. With this model in place, agencies could afford to not only deliver air tickets to their customers but they were also an invaluable, and unbiased, free source of information for travelers.
However, in recent years, triggered by a fierce competition between airlines that must reduce their operating costs to stay profitable, or just to survive, all major airlines have drastically reduced the commissions paid to travel agencies. In spite of the fact that these latter are still selling a good deal of their tickets, major airlines were forced to do so in an attempt to stay competitive especially, with the low-cost carriers issuing only dematerialized (electronic) tickets exclusively through their own selling channel i.e.; on-line, over the Internet, from their sites et servers. Indeed, all major airline carriers are now practicing a ‘zero based travel agency commission’ policy and this tends to spread to other travel service suppliers such as the large car rental companies.
The elimination of the commission traditionally paid to travel agents on the sale of airline tickets and other travel products has led travel businesses to seek new sources of revenues. Thus, most travel agencies have introduced service fees to replace or complement the traditional commissions. However, this introduction of service fees brings with it the specific challenge of how to efficiently process charges without impacting their business.
While some consumers are comfortable making arrangements directly with the airlines or through the Internet, many continue to rely on travel agents for unbiased information and expertise when planning trips. Indeed, the infrequent traveler may have difficulty with the complex shopping and buying process. Airline pricing is still very complex and somehow illogical with hundreds of fares, which may change on a daily basis, and with varying restrictions for each route. For those who traditionally rely on travel agents to help them with their travel plans, travel agencies must be prepared to disclose to them, in a clear and unambiguous manner, that any increase over the net price, or any fee for issuing a ticket, is not part of the ticket price to be paid to air carrier, but solely a reimbursement or fee for the services provided.
When major airlines drastically reduced commissions, before totally eliminating them, no mechanisms were however made available to travel agents to “build in” the service fees and demonstrate to their customers the value of the additional services rendered. Fee calculations were done manually, a repetitive, painful and time-consuming task implying high risks of mistakes due to the number of applied fees and the complexity of the rules to compute them which depends on the customer's importance and on the service requested. Also, service fees charged manually cannot be easily justified and communicated clearly to the end customer at any point in time
Thus, there is a need for a system which solves the difficulties and complexities associated with the assessment of service fees and which may be recognized by the customer. Automated assessment of service fees at the point of sale i.e., in front office by the travel agent, must be possible to reduce the overall booking time and the risk of errors. The integration with mid and back office systems must be seamless to allow an efficient administration of the whole system, in spite of the multitude of service fees and complex transactions to manage. Also, it must be possible to track and update service fees and monitor transactions, from the back office, since they eventually determine the profit margins of the travel agencies.
Further objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to the ones skilled in the art upon examination of the following description in reference to the accompanying drawings. It is intended that any additional advantages be incorporated herein.